After a worrying opening session, in which he was left just 15th fastest, Rizla Suzuki rider
Chris Vermeulen rose to a more reasonable ninth to lead the GSV-R challenge on the opening night of the 2008 season - but team manager Paul Denning warned there is 'a huge amount of work to do' if Suzuki wants to be in podium contention on Sunday.
Vermeulen improved dramatically between the two sessions as he took almost a second-and-a-half off his best time from earlier in the evening.
"The first session of the 2008 season got off to quite a bad start to be honest and we really struggled," confirmed Chris. "We had a big vibration problem that we have had a couple of times, but I've really got to thank my guys as they worked extremely hard between the sessions, and we think we have solved it!
"The second session was a lot better and I knew on my first lap out that we had made a big improvement - I even rode round on the out-lap with a smile on my face! It meant I could really start to work on getting the bike right and test some of the new
Bridgestone tyres that we had in our allocation. We seem to have found a tyre that works well already and tomorrow we will do a longer run on it and make sure it is durable for the race," he added.
Team-mate
Loris Capirossi - making his first appearance for Suzuki at a grand prix event - gained less ground, being twelfth in FP1 and eleventh at the end of FP2.
"I think we improved a little bit in the last session and things seem to be getting better all the time," he claimed. "But I have some things wrong with my lines around the track and I need to work on that. There are still a few things we need to look at and get sorted out on the bike, but I am sure we can go better tomorrow - we now have a clear direction to follow and I think we can take big steps forward."
"We know we have a huge amount of work to do tomorrow to get to the podium challenging pace, but we have made significant steps towards that this evening, and I hope we can continue in that direction tomorrow," said Denning.
